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Activating Global Cooperation to Preserve an Endangered Reef

Naitauba's sea temperature monitoring program underway! - Part I

Submitted by ReefInitiativeTeam on Tue, 03/25/2014 - 06:04

OUR SEA TEMPERATURE MONITORING PROGRAM ON NAITAUBA’S REEF IS NOW UNDERWAY!

With our Onset HOBO data loggers in hand and ready to go, the next challenge quickly emerged―we needed to place them securely on the reef and make sure we will be able to find them again when it’s time to retrieve their precious data.

We wanted the initial monitoring sites to give us the fullest representative picture of the entire reef possible.

We decided to measure sea temperatures outside the reef on the two opposite ends of the Island―the exposed eastern side, facing the oncoming trade winds, wave action, and currents, and the more sheltered western side.

We also decided to place loggers at sites inside the reef, too, in accessible locations that are easy for us to re-locate so that we can check them frequently and so remain vigilant for rising temperatures that could threaten the reef.

We chose a sunny Saturday afternoon for the installation. We took our underwater camera to document the process, and have included a small sample of the resulting images here...

Check again soon for Part II about our discoveries while installing the loggers!